Mwana Kupona binti Msham (born on Pate Island

Pate Island

Pate island or Paté island is located in the Indian Ocean close to the northern coast of Kenya, to which it belongs. It is the largest island in the Lamu Archipelago, which lie between the towns of Lamu and Kiunga, close to the border with Somalia....

, died c. 1865) was a Swahili

Swahili people

The Swahili people are a Bantu ethnic group and culture found in East Africa, mainly in the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya, Tanzania and north Mozambique. According to JoshuaProject, the Swahili number in at around 1,328,000. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil,...

 poetess of the 19th century, author of a poem known as Utendi wa Mwana Kupona ("the book of Mwana Kupona"), which is one of the most well-known works of early Swahili literature

Swahili literature

Swahili literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the Swahili language particularly by Swahili people of the East African coast and the neighboring islands. It may also refer to literature written by people who write in Swahili language...

.

Relatively little is known about her life. Her grandson Muhammed bin Abdalla reported in the 1930s that Mwana Kupona was born in Pate, and that she was the last wife of sheikh

Sheikh

Not to be confused with sikhSheikh — also spelled Sheik or Shaikh, or transliterated as Shaykh — is an honorific in the Arabic language that literally means "elder" and carries the meaning "leader and/or governor"...

 Bwana Mataka, ruler of Siu (or Siyu), with whom she had two children. Mataka died in 1856; two years later, Mwana Kupona wrote her famous poem, dedicated to her 14 year old daughter Mwana Heshima. Mwana Kupona died around 1865 of womb hemorrhaging.

Utendi wa Mwana Kupona

The poem dates to ca. 1858 (year 1275 of the islamic calendar

Islamic calendar

The Hijri calendar , also known as the Muslim calendar or Islamic calendar , is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim countries , and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic...

), and is centered on the teachings and advices of Mwana Kupona to her daughter, concerning marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 and wifely duties. Despite the seemingly secular subject, the book is prominently religious

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

 and even mystical

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

, and it has been compared to the biblical

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 Book of Proverbs

Book of Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs , commonly referred to simply as Proverbs, is a book of the Hebrew Bible.The original Hebrew title of the book of Proverbs is "Míshlê Shlomoh" . When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms. In the Greek Septuagint the title became "paroimai paroimiae"...

. A few lines of the poem are dedicated to the author herself:

Swahili:	Translation:
Mwenye kutunga nudhumu Ni gharibu mwenye hamu Na ubora wa ithimu Rabbi tamghufiria Ina lake mufahamu Ni mtaraji karimu Mwana Kupona Mshamu Pate alikozaliwa Tarikhiye kwa yakini Ni alifu wa miyateni Hamsa wa sabini	The author of this work is a sorrowful widow her worst sin The Lord will forgive her famous name she is Mwana Kupona Mshamu born in Pate. The date of the poem is 1275.